Faculty and Staff

Once she was in remission, Meg returned to her job at the law school and, in 1998, was named Assistant Dean for Student and Academic Affairs. But Meg soon felt called to a new career. Mindful of the role her education and resources played in her survival, Meg decided to commit her professional energies to helping other patients facing life threatening and serious chronic illnesses get the care they need. In September 2000, she and several colleagues founded the Center.

Meg received her undergraduate degree in religion from Vassar College in 1977 and graduated cum laude from the University of Wisconsin Law School in 1983. Following her graduation, she served as a law clerk in Arizona and as a trial attorney for the Milwaukee office of the State Public Defender. In 1987, she returned to the Remington Center at the University of Wisconsin Law School to teach. She earned her post-graduate Master of Laws degree in 1993 from the University of Wisconsin.

Sarah co-teaches Center courses and in Integrative Cases at the UW School of Medicine and Public Health. She serves as principal investigator/preceptor for MPH and medical students engaged in research projects at the Center. Sarah provides significant leadership to curriculum development at the Center – including formation of our Certificate programs, new course development (recipient of a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health & Society Scholars Course Development Grant), and currently the JD-MPH joint degree program. She also serves as a consultant to health care organizations who are engaging health care consumers in health systems improvement efforts.

Sarah served as the chair of UW’s Interprofessional Health Committee from 2008-10 and currently represents the Center on the SaveBadgerCare and Covering Kids and Families coalitions. Publications include: “Educating for Health Advocacy in Settings of Higher Education” in Patient Advocacy for Health Care Quality: Strategies for Achieving Patient-Centered Care, Jones and Bartlett Publishers, Inc. (with Meg and Rachel) and “Ten Strategies to Build Partnerships With Patients,” Wisconsin Medical Journal (with Meg and former colleague Mary Michaud).

Sarah graduated cum laude from the University of Wisconsin Law School. Concurrently, she obtained a master’s degree from the La Follette School of Public Affairs, during which she staffed the Dane County/Madison Joint Public Health Advisory Committee, working towards the unification of the county and city public health departments.

Rachel’s scholarship about the theory and practice of advocacy is extensive, and includes collaboration with an interdisciplinary team of scholars to conceptualize and articulate a set of principles about how patients’ diverse voices can best be incorporated into democratic deliberation about health policy. This project was published in a volume on that topic titled Patients as Policy Actors (Rutgers University Press, 2011). Her qualitative research has been published in numerous articles and book chapters, including her book Testing Baby: The Transformation of Newborn Screening, Parenting, and Policymaking (Rutgers University Press, 2011).

From 2003 – 2011, Rachel was associate dean of graduate studies at Sarah Lawrence College, and she has been on the faculty of the College’s Health Advocacy Program (HAP) since 1998. For her last four years at Sarah Lawrence, she also directed the college’s Child Development Institute, engaging in research, outreach, and program development focused on children, childhood and education. As a Health Advocacy Program faculty member, Rachel taught a number of courses and played a central role in curriculum development, particularly with respect to increased focus on the linkages between individual patient advocacy, community mobilization, and system-level policy change. Over this same time – working in conjunction with CPP’s Meg Gaines and Sarah Davis –she played a formative role in nascent efforts to develop professional codes and ethics for the health advocacy profession. Rachel, Meg and Sarah co-authored: “Educating for Health Advocacy in Settings of Higher Education” in Patient Advocacy for Health Care Quality: Strategies for Achieving Patient-Centered Care. Edited by J. Earp, E. French, M. Gilkey. Boston: Jones and Bartlett Publishers, Inc. (2008). Rachel’s research and scholarship on the connection between advocacy and policy change has been funded by an Investigator Award in Health Policy from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (2006 – present).

Prior to completing her doctorate in sociology and moving into higher education full time, Rachel worked as a health advocate in public, non-profit, and community settings.

Kathy received her PhD from the UW’s Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis Department. Her graduate program and dissertation focus were in higher education institutional transformation and academic change and innovation.

Carole has a PhD in Educational Policy Studies from UW-Madison, with an emphasis on the history of higher education. She also holds a BA in Elementary Education from SUNY Cortland, where she focused on multicultural and gender education.

Marc very much enjoys using technology to enhance the Center’s programs and services, as well as having the opportunity to collaborate with all staff at the Center on a variety of projects. He is well versed in a variety of open source content management systems, including wordpress and Drupal, CiviCRM, graphic design applications, and Google Apps.

Marc graduated from University of Wisconsin Law School in 2009 and currently serves on the UW Health Adult Patient and Family Advisory Council. When he is not at the Center, Marc enjoys photography, with many of his pictures being featured on the Center’s various websites and at the University of Wisconsin Carbone Cancer Center.

Suzanne graduated with a bachelor’s degree in art history from Mount Holyoke College, and a medical degree from Wayne State University. Her post-graduate training includes a pediatric internship, followed by residency training in adult psychiatry at Michael Reese Hospital in Chicago, where she won the Michael Reese Medical Staff Award in recognition of “professional competence and a warm and humane attitude toward patients and their families.” While at Michael Reese, Suzanne implemented a psychiatric screening program for all pediatric oncology in-patients. She has additional fellowship training in child and adolescent psychiatry at the University of Chicago. She has also worked in hospital consultation-liaison psychiatry and community mental health psychiatry.

Advocacy has been a way of life for Suzanne’s family. Her mother, a cancer survivor and life-long community activist, is the president of the board for a non-profit agency serving at-risk youth. Suzanne’s father, a physician and survivor of advanced prostate cancer, assertively advocated that he be treated with novel therapies and has dedicated the latter part of his career to the cryosurgical treatment of prostate cancer. He is also an outspoken advocate for the screening and early diagnosis of prostate cancer.

Suzanne’s most personal effort navigating our complex medical system was advocating for her own son, who was having medical problems and facing developmental disabilities. Married to a physician, and counting many medical doctors among her family and friends, Suzanne is able to draw knowledge from a vast array of specialists.

While at the University of Wisconsin Law School (’99), Jessica participated in clinical programs at the Wisconsin Coalition for Advocacy (now Disability Rights Wisconsin), the Wisconsin Coalition Against Domestic Violence and the Elder Law Center of the Coalition of Wisconsin Aging Groups.

Jessica has experience as a support person for family members with serious health issues. She draws on this experience as a member of the UW Health Adult Patient and Family Advisory Council. A member of Jessica’s family was a client of the Center in 2007 and received support in seeking a second opinion and navigating the realm of clinical trials. The support was invaluable and Jessica was thrilled when the opportunity arose for her to join the Center staff.

Prior to joining the Center, Jessica worked as a staff attorney at Disability Rights Wisconsin providing training and supervision to benefit specialists in the Disability Benefit Specialist Program, for which she was previously the program coordinator.

Lael’s experience advocating for others in the medical system became a personal one in July 2008 when her 3 year old son was diagnosed with leukemia. Although she was experienced in advocating for patients within the health care system, advocating for her son brought this to a deeper level. The advocacy work she continues to do for her son has not only improved his care and subsequently his health, but the relationships with their health care team as well.

Working at the Center For Patient Partnerships allows Lael to share her work and personal experiences in health care to not only improve people’s lives through advocacy but to also inspire and support others working in this field.

In his cancer journey, Pete has faced multiple recurrences, each time leaning upon his local medical team at the University of Wisconsin Comprehensive Cancer Center, the clinical researchers at NIH/NCI, and the support of the center, friends and family. Pete and his wife, Nancy, have two children, Sam and Mary, and family is central to his wellbeing. Prior to his involvement with the center, Pete worked for 28 years as manager of a local private engineering practice and as a consultant.